Loring M. Danforth

For more information see: https://loringdanforth.com/

Loring Danforth (born 1949) is a cultural anthropologist whose work focuses on symbolic or interpretive anthropology. Danforth took a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine in 1978. In 1991, he was promoted to Full Professor, and 2004 he was named Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropology. Twice during his time at Bates Danforth served for a year as Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University.

Danforth’s scholarly interests have focused on the interpretation of a wide variety of symbolic or expressive forms in several cultures. His early work dealt with Modern Greek religious rituals. His research in northern Greece on spirit possession as a form of ritual therapy was followed by research on death rituals – funerals, laments, and exhumations – in central Greece.

In 1988, Danforth turned his attention to the construction of ethnic and national identities, nationalism, and human rights in relationship to the “global cultural war” between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia (now the Republic of North Macedonia) and the position of the Macedonian minority of Northern Greece. This interest in turn led to another project (conducted together with Prof. Riki Van Boeschoten of the University of Thessaly) on the experiences of the 38,000 children – Greeks and Macedonians – who were evacuated from northern Greece during the Greek Civil War (1946-49).